Kohelet Yeshiva Hires New Head of School

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Kohelet Yeshiva High School has hired a new head of school just two months after the abrupt departure of the modern Orthodox institution's former leader.

Rabbi Gil Perl will leave his position as head of school at Margolin Hebrew Academy and Feinstone Yeshiva, an Orthodox Jewish day school in Memphis, Tenn., to join the Merion Station school this summer. He replaces Rabbi Elchanan Jay Weinbach, who left for personal reasons in November, according to a school announcement.

Jerome Marcus, president of Kohelet, emphasized that Perl is a "very accomplished scholar in both the secular world and in the Jewish world."

Perl earned a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University, where he completed his dissertation on the Netziv, a 19th century rabbi who led a renowned yeshiva in Lithuania. Prior to working at the school in Memphis, Perl served as director of admissions and then associate head of school at Yeshiva University High School for Boys from 2005 to 2007. He received his rabbinic ordination in 2007 from Yeshiva University.

"He's done a lot of thinking about what modern Orthodoxy is and what it should be," said Marcus. "He thinks about how it can speak to Jews of many different intellectual and spiritual orientations."

Marcus said he did not expect there to be radical changes at the school between Perl and his predecessor.

"The religious orientation of the school and its commitment to modern Orthodoxy is not going to change," Marcus said. "I think every leader who is a substantial personality tries to leaves his own mark on the institution that he leads, and precisely how Rabbi Perl's approach will differ is not something that I would try to characterize at this point."

Rabbi Rafi Eis is serving as the interim head of school until Perl arrives.